Windsor has put Ottawa on notice to either fix the Paul Martin building or else remove the unsightly scaffolding that has surrounded the prominent downtown building the past several years.

“If it’s safe, remove the hoarding,” said John Miceli, the city’s executive director of parks and facility operations.

City officials responded angrily Friday to comments made by a spokesman for Public Works and Government Services Canada Minister Diane Finley and reported in The Windsor Star. Describing as “reckless” comments made by Windsor West MP Brian Masse about the building’s condition, Marcel Poulin said it was “not true that the building poses any safety risk to the public.”

Mayor Eddie Francis insists the minister’s spokesman has it wrong, and that it’s a public safety issue “that can’t wait.”

“I’d invite the minister’s press secretary to review Public Works (Canada’s) own documents as they relate to the condition of the Paul Martin building … and if they feel it’s satisfactory and there’s no risk — release those documents to the public,” said Francis.

Having failed to secure a deal that would have seen the downtown heritage structure transformed into a university law school, Windsor has now issued Ottawa an ultimatum to come up with a plan “to address the failing facade” of the federal building.

Francis said municipal authorities had been willing to look the other way over the past two years of negotiating a transfer agreement, which he said would have included a commitment by the owner (the federal government) to fix the building’s facade. But after Ottawa walked away last week — arguing the city’s plan was “a very bad deal for taxpayers” — Francis said it’s necessary to have a new plan for repairing the crumbling heritage structure.

Municipal bylaws hold no sway over federal properties, but that exclusion doesn’t extend onto the sidewalk public right-of-way. In a letter Wednesday to Public Works and Government Services Canada, city engineer Mario Sonego pointed out the last city-issued annual “hoarding permit” expired Dec. 31. The letter said the city was prepared to extend it for three months while “placing you on notice” that a plan was needed “to protect the safety of the general public in the vicinity of your building.”

The mayor had suggested last week there was hope that government party MP Jeff Watson (C — Essex) might be able to help salvage the three-way deal, but Francis was caught by surprise Friday upon learning such help now appears unlikely.

“Any way you look at the mayor’s proposal it’s a raw deal for the feds,” Watson said in an email Friday to The Star. He said the Conservative government had “invested heavily in the mayor’s economic projects in Windsor for many years,” and that it would end up costing taxpayers too much.

“How is it a raw deal to ask the feds that their building not fall down?” said Francis. “When they say they’ve got to protect the taxpayer, they’ve also got to protect the taxpayer from dying on the sidewalk,” he added.

Francis said the feds have “a moral, social and corporate responsibility” to ensure the building “doesn’t fall on someone,” and that such a situation would never be allowed to exist in Ottawa.

“They have a health and safety concern, and I feel they strongly need to worry about that,” said chief administrative officer Helga Reidel.

City officials also expressed surprise that, what they called negotiations between city and federal teams, were instead described by the minister’s spokesman as mere consultations.

“I’m really astounded … these were most definitely negotiations, no question about that,” Reidel said. She said it was the feds themselves who approached the city — and not the other way around — after word first got out that Windsor was looking at building a new city hall.

In a separate email Friday to The Star, Watson said federal employees currently working at the Paul Martin building will not be transferred out of the core once it’s vacated, a move expected by 2017 involving more than 350 employees.

“Just so it’s clear, fed jobs will stay downtown. The notion of a jobs exodus is absolute nonsense,” said Watson. As the closest sitting Tory, the Essex MP has regularly acted on Windsor’s behalf in Ottawa, but his relationship with Francis appears to have cooled over the Paul Martin file.

Poulin told The Star that fixing the building would cost about $18 million, with a likely return of only $2 million, something he indicated didn’t pass Treasury Board muster. Public Works Canada has advised the city it will be proceeding to sell 185 Ouellette Ave. “as is,” and that a public tender will be issued to secure leased office space for the departing employees, which include 350 Canada Revenue Agency employees.

Poulin said “The disposal process will require the purchaser to preserve the heritage aspects of this building.”

Francis said nobody in the private sector will be able to afford the cost of fixing the Paul Martin building and then making it profitable.

He worries of “the potential, an extreme potential” that if the feds find no buyer and continues to allow the building to fall further into disrepair, Ottawa could move to amend the structure’s heritage designation “and tear it down.”

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